Erasmo de Rotterdam; jardín; locus amoenus; diálogo filosófico; imitatio; ékphrasis; philosophia Christi

Abstract

In his want of propagating a renewed Christianity, a new Christian philosophy based on the Scriptures devoid of formalisms and encouraged by the wisdom of the ancients, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) wrote a number of works that contributed to spread his philosophia Christi, that were widely used as formative and informative texts through out Europe. Among his complex and well developed dialogues is the one intitled Convivium religiosum (1522), which displays many of the resources of a Renaissance philosophical dialogue, specially the performance of a sort of personal emulation of Plato and his Phaedrus. Erasmo traces a complex imitatio of the Platonic dialogue and locates his own in a locus amoenus (a pleasant place that is the house and the gardens of Eusebio, host of the convivium), and turns it into a place of knowledge and philosophy, and what is more, of moral itself, of that very philosophia Christi he tries to teach. Thus Erasmus combines in his dialogue a religious message and a plausible and evocative setting, which makes the Convivium religiosum an exemplary work among the philosophical dialogues of the Renaissance, equally caring for its contents and for its theatrical form. This article will show the relevance of the garden not only as a scenery but as a catalyst for the philosophia Christi.